Freddy was looking at her with the same entranced attention.
‘You’d better get back outside,’ she said to him softly, and he nodded obediently.
‘Yell if you need me!’
‘I will. Thank you, Freddy.’ She brushed a hand up his arm, smiling gratefully at him.
He blushed. ‘No problem.’
Dorothy had him wrapped around her little finger, thought Miranda, and then thought, was her mother going to marry Freddy? She wasn’t sure how she would feel about that.
She liked him, but her mother had always enjoyed her independence – how would she submit to being married, tied down again?
‘You must stay the night, Sergeant,’ Dorothy said to Neil. ‘I’m afraid the spare room is just a little box, but the bed is comfortable.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Now, about food – have you eaten? I can quickly whip up supper for you both – how about omelettes?’
‘That would be lovely,’ Miranda said. ‘Can I have a tomato omelette?’
‘Of course – and you, Sergeant?’
‘The same for me, thanks.’
‘Chips with them? Or would you rather have salad?’
‘Chips, please,’ Neil said.
‘Salad for me, Mum. Can I come and help you?’
‘I don’t need help to make a couple of omelettes! You go and lie on the sofa, you must be very tired, driving all this way. Put the electric fire on in the sitting room, and there are rugs in the cupboard by the window.’
Miranda knew that if she lay down with a rug draped over her, she was so tired she would fall asleep within minutes, so she sat upright, switched on the television and watched a documentary about African national parks to keep herself awake.
‘Aren’t big cats beautiful?’ she thought aloud, staring at the screen. ‘Look at the way that leopard is moving. Poetry in motion.’
‘Pity they eat people,’ Neil drily replied and she laughed.
‘Well, we eat cows and sheep – where’s the difference?’
‘You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?’
‘No, just a member of the Be Fair to Leopards Party. I do love them, don’t you? What strikes me about big cats is that household cats, ordinary tabbies, act in exactly the same way. Clean themselves, move, eat, just the way wild cats do. They’re just as beautiful and bloodthirsty. We had a cat once who used to kill mice, shrews, birds – bring them into the house and arrange them on the mat in front of my mother, like trophies. He used to eat their heads, poor little things, and leave the rest. Too lazy to pluck or skin them.’
Neil shuddered. ‘Sounds horrible.’
Dorothy pushed a trolley into the room and handed each of them a tray on which was set their cutlery, a glass of home-made apple juice, their omelette on a plate, thinly sliced bread and butter, and the vegetables they had asked for. A delicate little salad for Miranda, crisp golden chips for Neil.
‘This is delicious,’ Neil said, eating ravenously.
When she had finished, Miranda felt even more tired and could not stop yawning.
‘Bed for you,’ Dorothy said. ‘What you need is a good night’s sleep.’
‘And me,’ Neil grimaced. ‘It has been a very long day.’
No sooner was Miranda in her bed than she fell deeply asleep, and woke up to find the room filling with pale grey and lemon light. The sun was just floating up behind the trees, a pale yellow slice in the champagne sky.
It was the first night she had spent for a fortnight without bad dreams. She stretched, yawning, feeling clear-headed, healthy, full of energy.
After a shower she dressed and went downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen making apple and blackberry jelly. The rich scent of the fruit filled the room. Dorothy stirred attentively, humming to herself. Along the kitchen counter stood clean empty pots, waiting for the jelly to fill them.
Hearing Miranda’s footsteps she turned her head and smiled. ‘Sleep well? Yes, I can see you did. You’ve got some colour this morning and your eyes are clear. You looked terrible last night. Sit down, I’ll get you some breakfast – how about some porridge? I must just get this jelly to the right consistency, give me two minutes.’
‘I’ll be happy with toast, I can make it myself, don’t mind me, just look after your jelly.’
Miranda cut a slice of bread, found the old toasting fork and opened the grate door of the Aga and began toasting her bread at the bars. The heat glowed, the bread turned golden brown. She spread it with marmalade and bit into it as she boiled the kettle and made herself some instant coffee.
‘Can I make you some coffee, Mum?’
‘Mmm, thanks.’
Neil didn’t appear for another hour. When he finally came downstairs, he found the two women sitting with mugs of coffee in the kitchen, talking quietly, rows of filled jars glistening red along the counter.
‘Sorry, I overslept, I meant to be up and away an hour ago, but I must have slept through my alarm,’ he said with a sheepish grin.
‘You obviously needed more sleep,’ Dorothy soothed, getting up. ‘I expect you’ve been under a strain lately, and working far too hard. ‘Now, what would you like for breakfast?’
‘Oh, just a coffee will suit me, then I must run.’
‘Nonsense – how about piperade?’
He looked confused. ‘What’s that?’
‘Fried peppers and tomatoes cooked with scrambled egg – it’s delicious and very good for you.’
Neil hesitated. ‘Well, it sounds gorgeous – if that isn’t too much trouble. Thank you.’
It was cooked within minutes and Neil ate it slowly. ‘It’s a surprising mixture, but I love it. I might try to cook it for myself.’
He left half an hour later. ‘Don’t forget, keep indoors for a few days, don’t tell anyone where you are, and let me know if you notice anyone hanging around.’
‘I know, Neil. I’ll be careful,’ Miranda said, and waved as he drove off back to London.
‘He’s in love with you,’ her mother said.
‘I hope not, because I could never feel the same way, and he’s a very nice man, he deserves to be happy.’
‘Hmm,’ Dorothy said thoughtfully, staring at her.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ her mother said, going back into the house.
‘Where’s Freddy?’ asked Miranda, following her.
‘Asleep in his tent. He sleeps all morning, but he won’t come into the house. He wants to be ready if we get unwelcome visitors.’
As the slow, quiet days passed, and the nights of deep, untroubled sleep, Miranda felt her tension and misery lift. She still dreamt of Alex now and again, but her dreams about him now were different. And with better health she began to be restless.
‘I need to work. I think I’ll get a job somewhere down here.’
‘Would that be safe? Will Neil agree?’
‘I shan’t tell him. I can’t do nothing all day, and I need to earn my own living. I don’t suppose I’ll get a job in publicity, but anything will do.’
A few days later they had lunch at a hotel in Dorchester and Miranda saw a job advertised; for a secretary for the hotel office. She immediately applied, was interviewed and given a short test on the office computer system.
Flushed and excited she rejoined her mother in the car park. ‘I got it! I start work next Monday. The salary isn’t as good as I was earning in London, but it’s OK. I get a free lunch, too. They seem a friendly lot in the office, too; it’s a small place and I didn’t get the impression it was over busy.’
‘It will take you half an hour to drive here every morning, and half an hour back, you realise.’
‘There’s a bus that comes to Dorchester from your village, the manager said. Several of the staff take it.’
‘You don’t want to go by bus!’
‘I can’t use your car, it would leave you without transport.’
Dorothy groaned. ‘You are the most aw
kward, obstinate girl! Well, try it to begin with, then you can borrow my car if it doesn’t work out.’
But it did. Miranda enjoyed the morning drive on the bus, in misty half-light at first until the sun was fully up and the countryside swam into full view, rolling fields with neat hedges, filled with browsing sheep and cows, oaks and a few moth-eaten elms, woods and valleys and soft green hills. Dorset was a gentle, domestic landscape, very different to the dramatic Greek island she had been visiting.
The office was orderly and quiet, her fellow workers amiable and easy-going, with their burring Dorset accents. They were never in a hurry but worked methodically, got the job done. She enjoyed walking around Dorchester during her lunch hour, after eating a light lunch in the kitchen. She got to know the hilly streets, the shops, the museum where Thomas Hardy’s study was reproduced and where ancient farming tools and machines were on display.
One day when she got home her mother told her Alex had been there, demanding her address.
‘I had a lot of trouble getting rid of him. I had to threaten to call the police in the end. He’s a very intimidating man, isn’t he?’ Dorothy gave her a shrewd, searching stare. ‘What exactly happened with him, Miranda? He didn’t look like a killer to me.’
‘What do killers look like? Sean looks like a slightly plump cherub, I would never have suspected he could be capable of killing anyone.’
Her mother shuddered. ‘Don’t!’
‘I believed Alex was on my side, you know. He completely convinced me I could trust him. Looks can be very deceptive.’ She tried to keep the hurt and bitterness out of her voice but her mother knew her too well.
‘Are you in love with him?’ she asked softly.
Miranda did not answer and carefully avoided meeting her mother’s eyes, but she knew she had already betrayed herself.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Dorothy sighed. ‘I can’t blame you. If I was your age I think I’d have fallen for him, too. He’s very sexy, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Miranda said shortly, remembering her dreams. Alex was very sexy, but she didn’t trust him, and trust was essential in a relationship.
Terry Finnigan sat in his office staring at the documents in front of him. Bernie had been greedy. He wanted more of Terry’s firm than Terry wanted to let him take, his lawyers had drawn up contracts which would give him control of the firm in future.
If Sean was found guilty, he might spend twenty years in prison, although their counsel seemed to think the sentence would be much lighter than that.
‘We’ll plead a moment of madness brought on because Sean was afraid of losing the woman he loved if she found out about the baby,’ he declaimed, fingering his jacket lapels in a courtroom gesture. ‘He hadn’t planned to kill the girl. He blacked out for a minute, then panicked and tried to hide his crime, but he regrets it deeply, wishes he had not done it. If we can get the charge switched to manslaughter, he would go down for a few years – two, three, at most four.’
If Bernie’s family took over their business, though, Sean would come out to find the company was no longer in their control.
Terry ground his teeth. Damn Bernie. Why should he put up with being blackmailed like this? It was too big a price to pay for getting very little information from a bent copper. Of course, Bernie had helped him to get the names of Greek contractors who would get rid of that girl, but even there, apparently, they had fallen down on the job. Miranda had lived, for which, now, Terry was glad. But he didn’t feel he owed Bernie half his company.
And he wasn’t going to hand it over, either. Let Bernie do his worst.
He picked up the contracts and tore them up, pushed them into a big brown envelope and addressed it to Bernie. No need for a letter to accompany them. Bernie would get the message.
A week later as Terry was getting into his car after a long day’s work he was shot dead from across the street.
The police were baffled. They had eyewitnesses, but the descriptions of the killer were too vague; tall, dark-haired, youngish, wearing a black leather coat. Nobody noticed his face; they had all been too frightened.
‘It was a contract killing,’ the officer in charge told Neil. ‘No question, a real pro job – he was shot through the head once, killed outright. No amateur could be responsible.’
‘I wonder who ordered it?’ Neil thought aloud. ‘We’ll have to dig deeper into Terry’s past. Before he came to London, what was he doing? Who wanted him dead?’
When they told Sean in prison he collapsed and had to be sedated. For the following week he was on suicide watch. After a shock like that, in his situation, he was a prime suspect for taking his own life.
Miranda heard the news from Neil and was appalled. ‘Oh, poor Terry! I always liked him, you know, he was a friendly, cheerful man. Before . . . before the murder.’
‘You can’t remember anything he was involved in that could explain why someone should murder him?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but he must have been involved with some pretty nasty people if he knew how to hire people to murder me, especially so far away in Greece – mustn’t he?’
‘Yes, we’re looking into his past history, his life before he came down to London. He never mentioned what he was doing before that, did he?’
‘No, never. In fact, I used to wonder what he was keeping so secret.’
‘You should have joined the police. You’re a smart little cookie,’ Neil said, smiling at her.
She went pink. ‘Thanks.’ Then sighed. ‘How has Sean taken it?’
‘Badly, I’m told. They were surprised by how badly. Everyone thought he was a selfish little prat who didn’t care about anyone but himself, but he was badly shaken by hearing his father had been killed.’
‘He probably blames himself. Everything was going so well before Sean had his little fling, killed that girl. And Sean must know it, and feel guilty.’
‘My colleague tells me that the ex-wife has appeared and taken over running the firm with her new husband. I don’t think she’s overwhelmed by grief.’
‘Maybe she did it?’ Miranda grinned at him. ‘I never liked her.’
A year later the trial began in London, at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court. Miranda was called to give evidence on the second day, first thing in the morning. She was so nervous she was white and at first she could not bring herself to look at Sean in the dock. She answered the opening questions of the prosecuting counsel, staring at him rather than glancing round the high-ceilinged, panelled room.
When she finally risked a look at Sean she was struck by the changes the last year had made in him. He had lost weight, was pallid, looked much older. Their eyes collided, she quickly looked away, suddenly sorry for him.
The judge asked her a question and she turned to answer, feeling strange. There was a surreal feel to being here, with this judge in a white wig and red gown trimmed with ermine, behind his high chair the blaze of colour from a coat of arms on a shield.
Was that the royal coat of arms? Yes, she thought it was – there were the lion and the unicorn. The old nursery rhyme floated into her head. The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown. The lion beat the unicorn all round the town . . . what did it mean?
There was probably some real historical incident behind the rhyme. There always was. Nursery rhymes were the last remnants of the old street ballads that served the same office as today’s newspapers.
Her mind had wandered; she was brought back to awareness by another question from the prosecutor.
‘Exactly how long would you say it was between the moment when you ran out of that office and when you returned and rang the police?’
She was honest. ‘I have no idea. Half an hour, perhaps, or as much as an hour. I didn’t look at the time. I was too upset.’
The morning wore on interminably. Question and answer, question and answer . . . it was strangely boring as well as very tense. She had to fight a desire to yawn. Yet her nerves were jumping.
&nb
sp; The prosecutor finally stopped asking questions and sat down, but then she had to face the defence counsel.
He decided to start with questions about Tom’s death, about her mental breakdown, her hallucinations. He had her medical reports from that time.
‘You kept hearing people drowning, apparently?’
She swallowed. ‘For a while. Yes.’ She wasn’t going to lie about that. Where was the point? There would be other witnesses to the fact.
There was a suppressed ripple of reaction from those watching, a gasp, then a whisper of comment, and Miranda nervously looked round the court, then, for the first time.
And saw Alex.
Her heart leapt and she began to tremble.
He was sitting just a few feet away from her, wearing a dark suit and white shirt, a blue silk tie, looking magnificent. His skin had a deep, smooth tan that made his hair seem blacker than ever and his black eyes watched her in a way that was unnerving.
She moistened her dry lips with her tongue, looking away. Was he still involved with Elena? Would he be marrying her? Or had he already done so?
‘You were obsessed with drowning, in fact,’ the defence counsel said.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she whispered.
‘You wouldn’t say it, no, perhaps not,’ he repeated. ‘But is it true? I shall be calling a psychiatrist who worked with you three years ago who says that in his opinion . . .’
The prosecutor was on his feet. ‘Objection, your honour. Hearsay. Not substantiated in evidence as yet.’
‘I agree, Mr Ruddock,’ the judge coldly nodded. ‘The jury will disregard the defence counsel’s last sentence.’
Miranda wished she could sit down; she felt cold and weak. Through the high windows she watched the grey cloudy sky move by relentlessly. Was it raining in the streets? It seemed to her to be raining in here. Her eyes were misty with unshed tears.
When she had finished giving evidence she left the court, to avoid Alex, but found he had anticipated her action and was waiting outside.
His dark eyes were intense, glittering. ‘Miranda . . .’
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